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If there are DVD titles you'd like us to cover - please feel free to recommend!

The Vincent Price
Collection [Blu-ray]
(The Fall of House of Usher, The Pit and the
Pendulum, The Haunted Palace, The Masque of the
Red Death, Witchfinder General, The Abominable
Dr. Phibes) - Shout! Factory

ONE VOICE
(not Ellsworth Monkton Toohey): I
was very impressed with the Fox's Technicolor Noir Niagara
on Blu-ray
this week. The new 1080P image is significantly more
impressive and vibrant than the older DVD. The new
restoration of Tokyo Story
advances greatly over the every other digital release - it
offers and amazing presentation. Erich von Stroheim's silent
epic Foolish Wives
goes Blu-ray
from Kino and the result is an essential for serious film
fans. Baran bo Odar's The Silence
is a chilling thriller - now available on Blu-ray. Summer and Smoke
is an excellent romance/drama film with great performances
and Olive have transferred it to Blu-ray. Kiss of the Damned
is a stylistic, sexy take on the vampire horror by John
Cassavetes' daughter Xan. The Blu-ray
image is very strong. Unfortunately Francis Ford Coppola's Twixt
doesn't come together but has plenty of great scenes. On
DVD, Eric covered
Series One of the Nordic
Noir thriller
Unit One and
the rockumentary Beware of Mr. Baker.
Enjoy your week!

THIS WEEK's REVIEWS / COMPARISONS

Beware of Mr. Baker - A
legendary, era-defining drummer who played with Cream, Blind
Faith, Fela Kuti and many other groups, the mad, bad Ginger
Baker is as well known for his debauched offstage antics as he
is for his ground-breaking musicianship. DVD Release Date:
July 22nd, 2013

NiagaraBD - Belated honeymooners
Polly (Jean Peters) and Ray Cutler (Casey Adams) arrive at their
Niagara Falls cottage only to find that Rose (Marilyn Monroe)
and George Loomis (Joseph Cotten) have not yet checked out.
Though the Cutlers temporarily take another cabin, the lives of
the two couples are bound together for the next two days. Polly
discovers that Rose is having an affair and that George, though
emotionally unstable, has good reason for his jealous rage.
George accurately suspects that Rose openly flaunts her
sexuality to make him act crazy in front of witnesses. This is
part of Rose's plan: her lover Patrick (Richard Allan) will kill
George and make it look like suicide or a disappearance.
Instead, George kills Patrick, and he returns to kill Rose, but
finds Polly instead. As she had been sympathetic to him, he asks
her not to tell anyone that he is alive so he can simply
disappear. But, realizing that he wants to kill Rose, Polly
informs the police. What follows is escalating terror, with
George stalking Rose, Rose desperately trying to leave town, the
police searching for both of them, and finally George and Polly
adrift in a boat heading for the precipice. In Henry Hathaway's
Technicolor film noir, Niagara Falls serves as an apt metaphor
for the destructive power of out-of-control carnal and murderous
obsessions. Blu-ray Release
Date: July 30th, 2013

The SilenceBD - The Silence begins on a
hot summer day, when a girl named Pia is brutally murdered in a
field of wheat by Peer (Ulrich Thomsen), as his helpless friend
Timo (Wotan Wilke Moehring) watches. Exactly 23 years later,
another 13-year-old, Sinikka, is missing, her bicycle abandoned
in the same spot, leading police to suspect the same killer may
be at work again. Recently widowed detective David and his
colleague Janna struggle to solve the mystery of these parallel
crimes with the help of Krischan, the retired investigator of
the unresolved case. Blu-ray
Release date: July 23rd, 2013

Tokyo StoryBD - Yasujiro Ozu's most
widely distributed and best-known film presents the story of an
elderly couple in post World War II Japan who come to Tokyo to
visit their various children and realise that the family has
essentially fallen apart. The couple is received coldly by their
two modernized children and only their widowed daughter-in-law
seems glad to see them. The children shuttle their aging parents
off to a health spa in an attempt to get them out of the way.
They learn later that the mother has fallen ill upon her return
and arrive too late to say their good-byes. Shochiku
Blu-ray Release Date: July 6th,
2013

Summer and SmokeBD - Based on a play by
Tennessee Williams (expanded from his one-act piece
Eccentricities of the Nightingale). From childhood, Alma
(Geraldine Page) has loved John Buchanan (Laurence Harvey).
Repressed by the pressure of a minister father and a mother who
has never recovered for a nervous breakdown, she keeps these
feelings bottled up. Her life becomes unbearable when John
returns from medical school and takes up with the sultry Rosa
(Rita Moreno), the daughter of the casino owner who is as open
and willing, as Alma is shy and repressed. Geraldine Page
delivers a smoldering, stellar performance. Blu-ray Release Date: July 23rd,
2013

Foolish WivesBD - As artistically
brilliant as it is gleefully perverse, Foolish Wives is Erich
von Stroheim's epic-scale account of an American diplomat's wife
(Miss Dupont) who falls under the spell of a phony Russian Count
(von Stroheim). With his trademark eye for visual metaphor and
gritty detail, von Stroheim infuses the artistocratic splendor
of Monte Carlo (rebuilt in all its majesty on the Universal
backlot) with an air of moral depravity. The result is a Grimm's
fairy tale romance that is no less fascinating today than it was
80 years ago. Blu-ray Release
date: July 30th, 2013

TwixtBD - Val Kilmer and Elle Fanning star in this
terrifying horror film written and directed by Academy Awardr
Winner Francis Ford Coppola.* Kilmer plays Hall Baltimore, a
writer on a book tour who uncovers a disturbing murder that
could be source material for his next novel. But as Hall
investigates the killing, he finds himself confronted by
chilling nightmares, including the ghost of a young girl
(Fanning). As he uncovers more horrifying revelations, Hall will
discover that the story has more to do with his own life than he
could ever have imagined. Blu-ray
Release date: July 23rd, 2013

Unit One - Series One -
Unit One is a long-standing Nordic Noir thriller series that
tells the story of a group of staunch crime experts from an
elite unit within the Danish police force. We follow their
fascinating yet frightening work in the Danish underworld and
witness their unflinching commitment and affectionate solidarity
when pitted against horrifying, yet all-too-real, examples of
the extremes of human nature they face in the line of duty. Unit
One is based on true criminal cases through the last 10 years.
DVD Release Date: January 21st, 2013

Kiss of the DamnedBD - Writer-director Xan
Cassavetes, daughter of John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands,
shifts gears from documentary to feature work with this offbeat
horror opus, overtly inspired by the work of Dario Argento,
Mario Bava, and others of the same ilk. Set in New England, it
tells the story of two sisters. Both are French vampires - one
evil, the other benevolent. Milo Ventimiglia plays a
screenwriter who falls hard for the good sibling (Joséphine de
la Baume) which incites the anger of the other sister (Roxane
Mesquida). That young woman then decides to unleash fury on the
local town. Blu-ray Release
date: July 23rd, 2013